


Non nobis Domine, non nobis

by Innsmouth



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Casual Murder, Gen, Suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:01:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innsmouth/pseuds/Innsmouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Much to Terezi Pyrope's uneasiness, it turns out that her lusus requires a little extra protein in her diet.</p><p>She procures it the hard way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Non nobis Domine, non nobis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sermna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sermna/gifts).



Her lusus is knobbly and disproportionate in draconic adolescence, big enough to reach up with a taloned foot and tear lines in her jeans as she demands more food. The forest is not welcoming for a large airborne predator; there is no space between the trees for her to fly, and what prey she pursues on foot ends up bounding easily away into the undergrowth as the dragon lets out raspy roars of frustration and occasional puffs of whitish smoke. Mainly she survives on featherbeasts caught on the wing, feathers and bone coughed back up in a compact pellet hours later, and nut creatures gobbled down like seadweller hors d’oeuvres. Such a diet is enough for a small dragon to survive, but not to thrive and grow mighty; concern gnaws at Terezi’s mind, hissing that she’s not doing enough.  
  
She starts small, with the suicides she finds strung up in quiet copses or slumped among drifts of lavender leaves. Her forest seems to act as an uncanny magnet for the hopeless and despairing; such discoveries are not uncommon to Terezi. Under normal circumstances, she would merely cut them down and hang another scalemate. Though some of the little dragons are executed criminals, many dangle in silent commemoration. It would be unjust to leave them unacknowledged, she surmises, even if she has no names to enter in the court record.  
  
Butchery comes easily to her after sweeps of FLARPing. Vriska’s campaigns tend to be bloody and full of misplaced appendages, so Terezi is no stranger to slicing through muscle and bone. The finer points she picks up along the way, and after she’s done the first few, she knows how to skin and gut and filet a dead troll into dragon-sized pieces. The glassy or bird-eaten stares of her subjects cease to faze her at all.  
  
She reasons that she’s merely recycling; a minor acceleration of the natural order of things. Is it not noble, she wonders, to fuel the growth of the partner of a future legislacerator? Is it not serving justice in the long run? The dead have little remaining use, after all. So every so often, she cuts frayed ropes and drags limp bodies home through leaf litter and brambles for a little something extra in the dragon’s diet.  
  
But her comfortable routine does not last. The wet season sets in, and with it the corpse-flies and their ravening young. By the time Terezi stumbles across them, the dead are either skeletons or bloated grey-black abominations, riddled with squirming maggots.  
  
The dragon becomes restless, and snappish, and above all, hungry. She is growing into herself now; her wingspan could cover an adult troll, and the teeth that show when she snarls in irritation are back-slanted curves of enamel keen as fighting knives. Nut creatures and featherbeasts have ceased to be enough. The dragon exerts herself chasing after antlerbeasts in the small hours of the evening. Most often, she slouches back home, furious and empty-clawed; her prey is skittish and evasive, and not often caught. On the occasion that she does manage to bring down a scrawny buck or undersized doe, Terezi dares not approach the scorched and withered tangle of foliage that the dragon has claimed as her nest. Lusii do not harm their charges, she knows, but she is prudent still.  
  
She keeps searching. It is not enough. In desperation, she swallows her pride and goes to Vriska, who promptly expresses astonishment that Terezi didn’t even _bother_ to think of this on her own, god, how did Vriska _ever_ end up with _her_ as the other Scourge Sister. But, in Vriska’s infinite magnanimousness, she will show Terezi how to feed her dumb flying lizard.  
  
Vriska brings Terezi down into the caverns to meet her bloated, monstrous lusus, all clicking mandibles and glinting, ravenous eyes, and Terezi understands without being told.  
  
They argue. “It’s introllmane,” says Terezi, “introllmane and unacceptable in any court of law!”  
  
“We’re not in court, genius,” says Vriska. “You do what you gotta do, whether you like it or not.”  
  
Terezi storms out, cane beating a sharp _tak-tak-tak_ on the stone of Vriska’s hive, and they do not speak for a quarter perigee until Terezi is forced to acknowledge that her lusus’ diet is in dire need of some extra nutritive value.  
  
It makes her uneasy to hand down a verdict of death without just cause, and the thought worms at her as she prowls through the outlying sections of the forest, far from her hive. Troll Spanish moss hangs in lank straggles from the lower branches of the trees, and a strand of it tangles around one of Terezi’s spiky horns as if to check her. She yanks her head free and continues her lurking patrol.  
  
A suitable target emerges in short order; oliveblooded from the sign on his shirt, no lusus in sight as he ambles at the edge of the wood, poking at ferns and brambles.  
  
It takes Terezi approximately three and a half seconds to calculate the arc of the noose, aim, and rope him by the neck like Troll Roy Rogers. He burbles, thick fingers clawing at his neck as Terezi loops her end of the rope over a high branch and hauls it downwards with all her weight. The oliveblood’s wet burblings turn to desperate choking as he strangles, the toes of his sneakers barely grazing the dirt as he kicks out.  
  
He dies over a messy several minutes, neck streaked with olive-welted clawmarks, his face gone darkly green and swollen from lack of oxygen. A wet patch shines on the front of his shorts, and Terezi’s lip curls in involuntary disgust. She lets her end of the rope go, and the body thuds to the ground with a dull, organic _whumpf_.  
  
As she drags the corpse back through antlerbeast runs and gaps in the walls of bramble, she reasons with herself. _It is just. It is necessary. The life of one or several is a fair exchange for the continued survival of one vital to the correct administration of justice. Ergo, I am in the right._  
  
 _I am just._  
  
The dragon lunges forward as soon as she steps into the clearing that harbors her tree-hive. With a screech, she dives upon the fresh kill; Terezi backs away, letting the rope fall from her grip. She wonders, as the dragon feeds: if she is in the right, then why does guilt gnaw at the low, dark places in her thinkpan?  
  
Lying in her recuperacoon as the sun sneaks over the horizon, she has no answers.

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry that this is so short; I threw out at least three drafts before I settled on this one, and by that point the clock was ticking very quickly indeed. This is my first time attempting to write Terezi, and I'm afraid that it shows.
> 
> Regardless of my perfectionism and faulty time-management skills, I hope that you enjoy this.


End file.
